As new top level domains go on sale, companies bid for the land rush.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, has released the full list of the companies bidding on new personalisable top level domains, known as generic TLDs (gTLD). These take the place of the ".com" in a url, and allow companies to have websites at addresses like "video.youtube" or "gameofthrones.hbo".

Any company bidding on a domain name has to pay a non-refundable $185,000, and if there are multiple bidders, ICANN will assess them on "technical merits" and may hold an auction. Winners are then also obliged to pay high annual fees to the corporation.

Not every company bid on domain names using their own name. Google, for instance, has already revealed that it is bidding on names like .youtube and .lol, but on the ICANN document the bidder for those names shows up as "Charleston Road registry", and it is difficult to tell whether this is a Google shell or a company bidding for multiple domains for multiple clients.